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--even now I wonder over that unaccountable desertion--and much she must have suffered from the image of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will come to hate me--oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her--nor she with sorrow. Yet--even her how often have I made weep! All the unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there--only brighter--all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of mercy! what if she were to die!" "She will not die--she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many happy years--my son--are yet in store even for you--sorely as you have been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life--and has He not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it produce there resignation--if need be, contrition--and, above all, forgiveness." "Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution dealt out t
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